I met the man who would become my Uncle through an insane-clown-posse-adjacent dishwasher coworker who wanted us to star in his uncomfortably misogynistic Instagram horror movie.
I had just moved from New York City to a town of 7,000 that reminded me of a Massachusetts version of the seemingly white-washed, puritanical-on-the-outside, perverted-on-the-inside tourist trap I lived in as an angst-ridden nutcase teenager, and I was desperate for anything exciting to happen.
When I met my Uncle, his name was Clark (he told me to put “Clark Assface” into my contacts), and he looked like he was born out of a dystopian graphic novel. His small dark eyes were sunken into his improbably enormous cranium; his hair was long, wild and already streaked with grey; his physique ogre-ish; his pants were a foot too long; his beard sticky with shawarma; and he reeked of poorly digested faux cheese and his shirt was stained with the grease of a thousand microwavable pizzas.
In other words, he looked on the outside the way I felt on the inside.
Uncle Fingers’ Tinder Profile
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Clark lives in his mom’s basement amid stacks of books by every author I’ve ever wanted to read: Susan Sontag, Arthur Rimbaud, John Ashbery, Marcel Proust, Henry James, and on and on along with thousands of comic books, CDs, LPs, Criterion Collection films and every horror blu ray DVD imaginable, and he has actually read, watched, and listened to most of it. Walking through his subterranean labyrinth of cultural oddities, I felt like Belle encountering the splendor of the Beast’s library. (Never in ten thousand lifetimes would I have guessed that I’d be moving into that very basement several years later, and that my walls would be insulated with floor-to-ceiling stacks of VHS tapes).
I gave him my best constipated dinosaur impression (my way of immediately telling people what I’m all about) and we filmed a scene where a hand was amputated with dental floss. I left with eight of his books in my arms and, filled with distrust and mildly creeped out, didn’t talk to him or the busboy until months later, when I sunk into a deep, buried-alive-with-salt-rocks-in-my-chest depression—a despair which so thoroughly eviscerated my pride that I was willing to set aside any and all judgements and accept help from whomever was willing to lend a hand.
When I ran into Clark (on the rare occasion that he left his cave other than to buy lobster bisque at Big Y with his mother’s credit card), I figured that since his sole preoccupation is reading and watching and listening (and ordering nineteen items at a time from his mom’s Amazon account) widely and voraciously, he must have something beautiful in his head to put to paper. I told him to meet me at the library the next day, and he did. And then I asked him to meet me there again and again and again. And he said yes every time.
I christened him “Uncle Fingers,” after one of his incest-themed jokes. He wore a pin on his shirt that said “uncle,” and referred to me as his “niece.”
a look inside your typical Worm House issue
Uncle Fingers was my neighbor, best friend, volunteer chauffeur and muse. We read dozens of books sitting across from each other. We walked up the hills beside his home countless times (we joked about making a horror movie where I’m his killer personal trainer). He drove me to and from my 9pm - 2am library shift at the local college, and kept me company the entire time while reading horror novels. We listened to Phillip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, Knee Play V and sang along to Lana Del Ray thousands of times while he drove me to gigs and exhibitions.
When in doubt, I drew his face, which never ceased to lose its magic or mystery. I have drawn him hundreds of times. He has modeled for me as a satanic sacrifice. I have photographed him sleeping. I have painted his face on his lobster bisque-sculpted gut. He has binged on chips beside me as part of my poetry readings. I have studied his pugs and practiced my Diogenes-inspired performance art in his mom’s office. He has written avant-garde 8 hour operas dedicated to me. He gave me the intellectual stimulation and cardiovascular laughter I needed to start a weekly zine, which became the basis of my first book: How to be the worst laziest fattest most incontinent piece-of-shit in the world EVER. He also came up with the zine’s name: WORM HOUSE (subtitle: The Only Source of Real News in the World ) (sub-sub title: Bringing Las Vegas to the Berkshires).
What I really loved about Uncle Fingers is that he didn’t know how to live—he was free from the sort of social contrivances that might stop a man from asking his mom for money in public; his existence disturbed the status quo in a cathartic way. Watching his shit-eating pugs lick his lips on the filthy kitchen floor, I felt the fist around my heart lose its grip.
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Confession: the first version of this essay retreated from the larger, annihilating truth. I wanted to come across as likable—edgy, but without crossing into genuine moral ambiguity. I wanted you to think that because I was younger than Clark and a “person of color,” I could be granted plenary indulgences from guilt. But here is the reality: I was a vampire.
Clark was always available, always affirming, always giving without asking for anything in return. (At least not directly.) He indulged my every whim like I was the most delightful asian baby prostitute the universe has ever seen:
In imitation of Yoko Ono’s Film No. 4, I asked Uncle Fingers to film me running naked on his parent’s treadmill at 1 AM. Paying homage to Carolee Schneeman, I pulled a scroll out of my vagina while he sat beside me reading his Batman comic book. He filmed me dipping my hand into my period blood and wiping the crimson effluvia across my lips like the joker’s grin.
An Asian Narrative, exhibited at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
Every morning, I woke up to the sound of his Jalapeno chip-induced bowel explosions at 5:30 AM (his standard bedtime) before commencing my masochistic youtube workout regimens. While we cohabited in his basement, he was a kind of drug to me, a steady supply of adulation that I didn’t want to admit I needed. I was sober for four years, but still a user, still clinging to my extended adolescence by attaching myself to a man who cradled me like an enfant-terrible / radiant child.
Clark once called me the “unconventional love of his life.” At the time, I was too scared to say anything back. Without a doubt, I loved him. I loved him, but narrowly—neurotically—without giving him an inch to feel the largeness of his feelings. Love, I thought, was someone doing exactly what I wanted them to do. And being loved was starving myself to please.
As Clark wrote in a poem,
Love is a plutonium word
carried passionately by fools I know
From Worm House: The Only Source of Real News in the World
